Benylin

It all started so well for cough medicines. That sticky ruby- coloured stuff with the vile sweetened-over undertaste was always innocent of smut. When it was first advertised it was being administered to children with tickly coughs and proper mental- hospital pyjamas. In the 1970s some ultra- mild humorous narratives came in - hypochondriacal husbands, coughing dogs. In the 1980s, there were early computer graphics - here comes the science - with arrows to illustrate how the blocked passages were cleared.

But in the 1990s, practically no over-the-counter medicine, especially the more boring ones, could be advertised without a naked man. There were more epic torsos promoting Deep Heat rubs than breasts on bonnets at the Motor Show. Now the turn of the century, you will recall, was the golden age, the first flowering of the willy theme in advertising. So somebody absolutely had to steal it for cough medicine. Not just any cough medicine, but that most proper, practically prescription brand, Benylin.

To be more precise, what the new Benylin commercial introduces is more of a testicular or scrotal theme, but it's all part of the same culture movement. Bear with me.

Yes, it's privates on parade - army blokes in olive-green T- shirts shot from the waist up, standing in line in one of those big institutional rooms with double doors at the far end. In bangs a doctor with a bouncer- style NCO. The doctor is that latter-day John LeMesurier type - wavy silver hair, natural class authority - and he goes along the line asking them please to cough. Got it? Coughing demonstrates the bounciness of balls, one of the funnier standard tests in the medical repertoire.

So Doctor Colonel is staring fixedly at crotch level as he passes along the line to a chorus of polite little coughs. A shot from the back shows it is not full dress code. One lad can't cough, and so there's a lot of official requests, staring and some odd laying-on of hands in the mid- region. "Benylin can help stop a persistent cough, whether you want it to or not," says the sign-off. Will these associations help sell more Benylin to concerned mothers? Or is there a lot of male self-medication going on?

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